DTIC ADA493748: The Department of the Navy's Civilian Acquisition Workforce: An Analysis of Recent Trends

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The Department of the Navy’s Civilian Acquisition Workforce: An
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Analysis of Recent Trends
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The Department of
the Navy’s Civilian
Acquisition Workforce
An Analysis of Recent Trends
Susan M. Gates, Edward G. Keating, Bryan Tysinger,
Adria D. Jewell, Lindsay Daugherty, Ralph Masi
Prepared for the United States Navy
Approved for public release; distribution unlimited
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Preface
The defense acquisition workforce (AW) is responsible for providing a wide range of acquisi-
tion, technology, and logistics support to the nation’s warfighters. The United States Navy
asked the RAND Corporation to characterize the Department of the Navy (DoN) civilian
AW by means of a cross-sectional examination of key workforce characteristics and an analysis
of workforce turnover.
This report provides a descriptive overview of the DoN civilian AW over the past decade
and presents the results of preliminary analyses of data related to specific workforce manage-
ment issues: retention, professional development, and leadership. It demonstrates the utility
of workforce analysis and focuses attention on issues that deserve further analysis and policy-
maker attention. In performing this work, RAND leveraged prior work for the Office of the
Secretary of Defense/Personnel and Readiness (Program Integration) (OSD/P&R(PI)) (Gates,
Eibner, and Keating, 2006) and concurrent work conducted for OSD/Acquisition, Technol-
ogy, and Logistics (AT&L). The concurrent work is described in a companion report, TR-572-
OSD, The Defense Acquisition Workforce: An Analysis of Personnel Trends Relevant to Policy,
1993–2006 (Gates et al., 2008). That report provides additional background and method-
ological detail on the work presented here. All references in this report to AW trends through-
out the Department of Defense (DoD) relate to that report. This report combines data that
RAND received from the DoN with data received from the Defense Manpower Data Center
(DMDC).
This report will be of interest to officials responsible for acquisition workforce planning
in the Department of Defense and those in other parts of the DoD, workforce managers more
generally, as well as members of the defense acquisitions community. This research was spon-
sored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and
Acquisition and conducted within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of RAND’s National
Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the
Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence
Community. For more information on RAND’s Forces and Resources Policy Center, contact
the Director, James Hosek. He can be reached by email at [email protected]; by phone
at 310-393-0411, extension 7183; or by mail at the RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street,
Santa Monica, California 90407-2138. More information about RAND is available at www.
rand.org.
iii

Contents
Preface ........................................................................................................... iii
Figures ...........................................................................................................vii
Tables ............................................................................................................ ix
Summary ........................................................................................................ xi
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................... xvii
Abbreviations .................................................................................................. xix
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER TWO
An Overview of the DoN’s Civilian Acquisition Workforce ............................................ 5
Summary .........................................................................................................13
CHAPTER THREE
Retirement Behavior of the DoN’s Civilian Acquisition Workforce .................................15
CHAPTER FOUR
A Look at the FY 2001 DoN Acquisition Workforce Interns ..........................................21
Background on the NAIP ......................................................................................21
Characteristics of NAIP Participants and Their Early Careers ........................................... 22
Career Outcomes of Interns Compared with Those of Other New Hires .............................. 24
Retention of NAIP Participants ............................................................................ 24
Promotion of NAIP Participants ........................................................................... 28
Summary .........................................................................................................29
CHAPTER FIVE
An Analysis of DoN’s Acquisition Workforce Senior Executive Service Members ................31
Summary ........................................................................................................ 36
CHAPTER SIX
Summary and Conclusions ..................................................................................39
References .......................................................................................................41
v

Figures
2.1. DoN Civilians in the Acquisition Workforce, September 30 Annual Snapshots ........... 5
2.2. FY 2002 Recategorizations into the Acquisition Workforce, by Command ................ 6
2.3. DoN Civilians, by Education Level, September 30, 2006 ..................................... 7
2.4. DoN Acquisition Workforce Civilians, by Command, September 30, 2006 ............... 8
2.5. DoN AW Civilians, by Location, September 30, 2006 ........................................ 8
2.6. DoN AW Versus Non-AW Civilian Attrition Rates ............................................ 9
2.7. AW Versus Non-AW Civilian Attrition Rates, BA/BS-Only Population ...................10
2.8. AW Versus Non-AW Civilian Workforce Inventory and Attrition Rates, by Years of
Service, BA/BS-Only, FY 2006 .................................................................11
2.9. FY 2006 AW Versus Non-AW Civilian Attrition Rates, by SYSCOM .....................12
2.10. SYSCOMs’ AW Versus Non-AW Civilian Attrition Rates, FYs 1999–2006 ...............12
3.1. Percentage of DoN AW and Non-AW Civilians At or Near Full Retirement
Eligibility ...........................................................................................16
3.2. FY 2006 DoN Civilian Attrition as a Function of Years Relative to Full Retirement
Eligibility ...........................................................................................16
3.3. Percentage of DoN Civilians in CSRS, FY 2006 ..............................................17
3.4. Attrition Rates for DoN Civilian Workers Covered by CSRS and FERS, FY 2006 ......18
3.5. Attrition Rates for DoN AW and Non-AW Civilians in CSRS, FY 2006 ..................19
3.6. Attrition Rates for DoN AW and Non-AW Civilians in FERS, FY 2006 ................. 20
4.1. Basic Demographics of the FY 2001 DoN AW Interns ...................................... 22
4.2. FY 2001 DoN Interns Still Employed by the DoD .......................................... 23
4.3. Commands of the FY 2001 DoN AW Intern Cohort, FY 2006 ............................ 23
4.4. Grade Levels of FY 2001 DoN AW Interns ................................................... 24
4.5. Promotion of DoN AW Interns and Non-Interns .............................................29
5.1. Age and Gender Profile of DoN AW SES Personnel, September 2006 .....................32
5.2. DoN AW SES Members, by Command, 2006 ................................................32
5.3. Historical Commands of FY 2006 DoN AW SES Members,
by Service ...........................................................................................33
5.4. Command Switches by FY 2006 DoN AW SES Members, 1992–2005 ................... 34
5.5. Movement of DoN AW SES Members Between Commands ............................... 34
5.6. Service-Level Exports and Imports of AW SES Personnel, 2006 ............................35
5.7. Historical Grade Levels of FY 2006 DoN AW SES Members .............................. 36
5.8. Years Spent by FY 2006 DoN AW SES Members as GS/GM-15s ...........................37
vii